Yesterday Work had a lunchtime pizza party to 'celebrate' the firing of a management guy who'd been there for years and years. It was a light-hearted occasion, made so mostly by the fired man , a popular figure, who in his speech ripped gently into the company and mentioned a bunch of people who'd been fired in various re-shufflings already. It's a good thing I don't visualize a future for myself there because I don't have one - that was sobering. The pizza was good though.
There was also a drinking party for the fired man after work, which I didn't show up to because I had to hurry home to cook for a little dinner party here. It wasn't quite our first, but it was our first involving local people, so that was exciting and nice. People here are so personable, but not supine - it's easy to disagree with them in a friendly sort of way. I like it a lot.
Had a dream that I was yelling at a group of fighting girls who'd got a lawyer in to sort out their troubles. I was insisting that the economic model of the anglo-saxon legal systems meant that no lawyer was ever going to want to sort out a problem and any resolution they arrived at with his 'help' would be a pure accident. Woke up and thought about that, hoped it wasn't true, thought it probably was.
giovedì, giugno 21, 2007
mercoledì, giugno 20, 2007
The Triumph of the Passion
Last night I watched The Triumph of the Will and The Passion of the Jew back to back. The F-word was quite excited about The Triumph of the Will, pointing out its influences on modern propoganda and how undated that made it - how its tricks had been exploited - and also how people in the German backwaters must have felt when they saw it in the cinema, how they'd just be so impressed by the movement and decide to join it.
I wondered how many of the people in it were dead ten years later and wondered how many of the people in the crowd scenes had just showed up to all those parades because television hadn't been invented yet and there was nothing else on that day. Mostly I wanted it to end. Maybe I have no attention span, but not even Leni's loving, lingering shots of hot genetically pure men could keep me interested in all the hours and hours of Nazis and towns and banners and blah blah blah. I don't know what all the fuss is about, unless it's to get old twats back into The Guardian.
Obviously, The Passion of the Jew was much, much, much better. I think the F-word enjoyed it more because the poor bastard has actually had to sit through The Passion when someone he was visiting rented it, but for myself I don't know when I've laughed so hard.
I wondered how many of the people in it were dead ten years later and wondered how many of the people in the crowd scenes had just showed up to all those parades because television hadn't been invented yet and there was nothing else on that day. Mostly I wanted it to end. Maybe I have no attention span, but not even Leni's loving, lingering shots of hot genetically pure men could keep me interested in all the hours and hours of Nazis and towns and banners and blah blah blah. I don't know what all the fuss is about, unless it's to get old twats back into The Guardian.
Obviously, The Passion of the Jew was much, much, much better. I think the F-word enjoyed it more because the poor bastard has actually had to sit through The Passion when someone he was visiting rented it, but for myself I don't know when I've laughed so hard.
martedì, giugno 19, 2007
I found myself an easy way out
I have given up The Fatal Shore as a bad job and now I'm reading An Anthropologist on Mars. This represents a huge improvement in my quality of life and I'm wondering if I hate Robert Hughes: he's far too sloppy a writer and organizer of thoughts and references to be useful or smoothly enjoyable academically, and he uses too many big words to be widely popularly accessible, which in my head looks like being clever for the sake of it and not being clever for the sake of passing the cleverness on. But whatever. He built a career out of it so it must be working, and when I think back hard I remember his enthusiasm made his art books really nice to read.
Anyways, An Anthropologist on Mars is fucking terrific and organized at this point, which is, mind you, only about sixty pages in. The first case study is about an artist who loses any relationship with colour after a brain injury and the little exploration of colour given in it in neurological terms is so very interesting.
Anyways, An Anthropologist on Mars is fucking terrific and organized at this point, which is, mind you, only about sixty pages in. The first case study is about an artist who loses any relationship with colour after a brain injury and the little exploration of colour given in it in neurological terms is so very interesting.
domenica, giugno 17, 2007
Never so sugary
Went back to the instrument museum with my mum, who is visiting, and managed to get through the whole thing because we started early. That meant we got to go to the yummy and reasonably priced restaurant on the roof - delish though too salty, like all 'classy' food. Got to listen to my fave thing again - let's see what YouTube has in the way of that - not much. Oh well. Look out for the Ivory Coast horns when you go. Got to see and hear the glass harmonica too. So can you, because YouTube sucks less for that. Enjoy.
mercoledì, giugno 13, 2007
Glowers hath murdered sleep
Wednesday is the peak of work hardness, and I must thank heaven for that small mercy because by my reckoning I got shit-all sleep last night. Anything I write today will be in reference to what took away my sleep, which will be more appropriate to write about either a year from now or never. So I'll direct you instead to an extended review of After Dark and wish you good day, sir, madam.
martedì, giugno 12, 2007
Spinning off the shoulders
I'm trying to pretend my job isn't eating my brain by spending at least a few minutes a day with Robert Hughes' Fatal Shore. Some day when I'm not rushing off to work, watching my twenties spin away from me like a dead goldfish down the shitter, I'll write about it more at length, but suffice to say now it's like watching an awesome car wreck.
I liked his book about Goya better because it had more pictures and was better organized; Fatal Shore is all over the place, with apparently the only organizing factor being an artistic rise and fall of gross-out factors and accounts of indignation-rousing monstrosities. Of course, that has its own morbid charm, and I'm not considering looking away as long as I'm not slowing down the traffic behind me.
I liked his book about Goya better because it had more pictures and was better organized; Fatal Shore is all over the place, with apparently the only organizing factor being an artistic rise and fall of gross-out factors and accounts of indignation-rousing monstrosities. Of course, that has its own morbid charm, and I'm not considering looking away as long as I'm not slowing down the traffic behind me.
lunedì, giugno 11, 2007
Vagaries of the male race
Masonic Boom is back and her latest post reminded me of my walk home from work last night. I don't know what it is about Brussels - if this is a wierd place or if I just notice weird stuff more here . . .
Anyways, I was walking down the same street I saw the window-jumper on, thinking about who knows what, and suddenly a front door opens to the view of a lovely naked man picking up his copy of Vlan. Perfectly timed, to the degree that I wondered if I was being flashed, but then his attitude was one of a man who had opened the door to get his magazine caught in the hinge without really considering the consequences of doing so naked on a busy street; he performed a little dance to try to shield his bits. All of this happened in the span of two seconds and I kept walking without turning my head or doing anything extraordinary with my eyes as though I'd noticed nothing, while thinking ROCK AND ROLL. ROCK AND ROLL.
I was in a really good mood after that, and I remembered posing for an artist a few years ago who hadn't had a naked chick model for years before that, and how he said afterwards looking at tits he hadn't seen before always put him in a really good mood. This story doesn't have a point and now it's over.
A few minutes later, when I was nearing the flat, a 10-ish boy was keeping pace with me while walking his bicycle on the pavement. My heart was going out to him because he kept crashing the pedals into his calves. He looked slightly perturbed, and kept looking at me, finally approaching me in his formal kiddie French.
'Excuse me, madame, may I ask you a question?'
'Good sure that yes.'
'Is it normal to have a red mark on my arm like this after walking my bike as I hold it by the handlebars?' And he indicated a very faint reddening on his forearm.
'No, not for truly. A little bit of ache, could be, but not a mark red. It must be something of other.'
As you see I'm not fully confident in my French so the conversation ended there. I should have reassured him it was nothing, of course, instead of leaving him hanging, wondering if the 'something of else' was leprosy or the bubonic plague, but that didn't even occur to me until five minutes later. I must shed my discomfort with this language. After all, I'm fully capable of expressing 'I am certain that it not is the plague bubonic, but you could consider of to put on it some creme anti-bacterial' and there is no need for me to go around scaring cute little Belgian kids.
Anyways, I was walking down the same street I saw the window-jumper on, thinking about who knows what, and suddenly a front door opens to the view of a lovely naked man picking up his copy of Vlan. Perfectly timed, to the degree that I wondered if I was being flashed, but then his attitude was one of a man who had opened the door to get his magazine caught in the hinge without really considering the consequences of doing so naked on a busy street; he performed a little dance to try to shield his bits. All of this happened in the span of two seconds and I kept walking without turning my head or doing anything extraordinary with my eyes as though I'd noticed nothing, while thinking ROCK AND ROLL. ROCK AND ROLL.
I was in a really good mood after that, and I remembered posing for an artist a few years ago who hadn't had a naked chick model for years before that, and how he said afterwards looking at tits he hadn't seen before always put him in a really good mood. This story doesn't have a point and now it's over.
A few minutes later, when I was nearing the flat, a 10-ish boy was keeping pace with me while walking his bicycle on the pavement. My heart was going out to him because he kept crashing the pedals into his calves. He looked slightly perturbed, and kept looking at me, finally approaching me in his formal kiddie French.
'Excuse me, madame, may I ask you a question?'
'Good sure that yes.'
'Is it normal to have a red mark on my arm like this after walking my bike as I hold it by the handlebars?' And he indicated a very faint reddening on his forearm.
'No, not for truly. A little bit of ache, could be, but not a mark red. It must be something of other.'
As you see I'm not fully confident in my French so the conversation ended there. I should have reassured him it was nothing, of course, instead of leaving him hanging, wondering if the 'something of else' was leprosy or the bubonic plague, but that didn't even occur to me until five minutes later. I must shed my discomfort with this language. After all, I'm fully capable of expressing 'I am certain that it not is the plague bubonic, but you could consider of to put on it some creme anti-bacterial' and there is no need for me to go around scaring cute little Belgian kids.
domenica, giugno 10, 2007
Music makes the Belgian museum come together
It has started being a right bitch to go to work on Mondays. Nice weekend - met some very nice new people and saw the best museum ever, or one of them, which is the Musée des Instruments de Musique. It's in the finest Art Nouveau building in a city of staggeringly fine Art Nouveau buildings - fuck, do I love Art Nouveau - as the F-Word says, the last time architects tried to make their art aesthetically pleasing and livable - anyhoo, it's in one of those.
And it has intruments from all over the world on the ground floor, and then classical instruments on the first, and then I don't know because we got kicked out when it closed. Which is something, because we were there for two hours and usually after an hour in a museum, I'm thinking of getting a waffle or having a beer - sad but true. The charm isn't just the insane variety of instruments, like glass trumpets and displays of international jew's harps and bagpipes, although that's worth the price of admission - they also soundtrack it, so that most of the display cases broadcast a performance on the instrument it displays to the headsets they hand out. Fucking amazing.
And I'll tell you one thing: without Africa, we'd all be fucked. We would have no rock and roll or dirty beats, and no bass at all. We'd all be fucking polka-ing to violins and Edith Piaf, not that that would be so bad occasionally, but I like having a little more. It was really striking how contemporary the African instruments sounded, especially from the Congo - the beats and the instruments.
Here's an extended Suite Française review, and I am off.
And it has intruments from all over the world on the ground floor, and then classical instruments on the first, and then I don't know because we got kicked out when it closed. Which is something, because we were there for two hours and usually after an hour in a museum, I'm thinking of getting a waffle or having a beer - sad but true. The charm isn't just the insane variety of instruments, like glass trumpets and displays of international jew's harps and bagpipes, although that's worth the price of admission - they also soundtrack it, so that most of the display cases broadcast a performance on the instrument it displays to the headsets they hand out. Fucking amazing.
And I'll tell you one thing: without Africa, we'd all be fucked. We would have no rock and roll or dirty beats, and no bass at all. We'd all be fucking polka-ing to violins and Edith Piaf, not that that would be so bad occasionally, but I like having a little more. It was really striking how contemporary the African instruments sounded, especially from the Congo - the beats and the instruments.
Here's an extended Suite Française review, and I am off.
giovedì, giugno 07, 2007
Knowing my ABCs
For awhile my job was subjecting me to near-functional illiteracy- I'm so busy I stagger home like a zombie, cook dinner, chat, and fall asleep after watching whatever episode of South Park the F-word downloaded. One good thing about the hours and hours of travelling from that last trip to Canada was being able to wallow through books like a pig in tasty, tasty shit.
1. City of Glass, Paul Auster. I want to like Paul Auster because Smoke and Blue in the Face were such great movies and because he was recommended by Dale, whose blog I can read until I'm blue in the face, but I just don't, at least on the basis of The Brooklyn Follies and this book.
One thing City of Glass has in common with Brooklyn Follies is that they both have really great titles. Somehow that just makes it worse for me that the novels themselves aren't better. The ideas he plays with are fun but his characters are so wooden, so stock, so unbelievable as creatures - I wish he'd just write essays. City of Glass was extra annoying because he introduced himself as a non-omniscient character in it, and I hate when people do that. Makes me think of Martin Amis and then I'm in a bad mood.
2. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, A.S. Byatt. This was a re-read - I had to re-read it when I leant it to a friend, who then wanted to talk about it, and I couldn't because I didn't remember a damn thing. That's great. I hope I forget it again so I can read it afresh again. Marketed as fairy tales for grownups, but actually about the same level of sex and violence you'd find in the source material for Disney, besides the eponymous novella in the collection which has slightly more sex perhaps, and with a genie no less, which is hot.
The shorter stories are charmingly told without Margaret Atwood-style heavy-handedness, and the novella has that yummy A.S. Byatt charm of playing with delightful, abstract or difficult ideas within an engaging, beautiful narrative structure that was so evident in Morpho Eugenia, the novella that got turned into the vastly inferior Angels and Insects . . . Paul Auster, take note . . .
3. After Dark, Haruki Murakami. Japanese deliciousness. It goes somewhere inside the reader without going anywhere at all, really. Short, seemingly slight, and yet each secondary character is so well delineated they don't seem like secondary characters . . . each coincidence so well written there doesn't seem to be a coincidence . . . Paul Auster, take more notes. I have to write an extended review of this one to keep getting free books, so I'll give the hollas a rest for now, but it's great.
4. Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky. So fucking good. I'd read David Golder before and not really liked it, besides the great scene at the end, so I was thinking this would be more free-book-getting-duty-reading, but no. No no. Rough draft of two parts of a planned four or five part epic, that reads better than most books that get all the time they need. If someone handed it to me without telling me that, I wouldn't have been able to tell, I don't think. Doesn't feel like it ends up lickety-split. Charlotte Bronte-ish in how the descriptive passages surpass the dialogue, though the dialogue is good, and yet so very Russian in its scope, and so very harsh on the decline of the French.
It sounds trite to say it's a tragedy she wasn't able to finish it, when the death of the dimmest dimbulb in the Holocaust was a greater tragedy than a mere book getting abandoned. But I will say I hate the French a little more than I did before for allowing this woman's death before the epic was finished. She was writing at the height of her powers and it would have been a classic, a staggering classic, and it probably already is.
1. City of Glass, Paul Auster. I want to like Paul Auster because Smoke and Blue in the Face were such great movies and because he was recommended by Dale, whose blog I can read until I'm blue in the face, but I just don't, at least on the basis of The Brooklyn Follies and this book.
One thing City of Glass has in common with Brooklyn Follies is that they both have really great titles. Somehow that just makes it worse for me that the novels themselves aren't better. The ideas he plays with are fun but his characters are so wooden, so stock, so unbelievable as creatures - I wish he'd just write essays. City of Glass was extra annoying because he introduced himself as a non-omniscient character in it, and I hate when people do that. Makes me think of Martin Amis and then I'm in a bad mood.
2. The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, A.S. Byatt. This was a re-read - I had to re-read it when I leant it to a friend, who then wanted to talk about it, and I couldn't because I didn't remember a damn thing. That's great. I hope I forget it again so I can read it afresh again. Marketed as fairy tales for grownups, but actually about the same level of sex and violence you'd find in the source material for Disney, besides the eponymous novella in the collection which has slightly more sex perhaps, and with a genie no less, which is hot.
The shorter stories are charmingly told without Margaret Atwood-style heavy-handedness, and the novella has that yummy A.S. Byatt charm of playing with delightful, abstract or difficult ideas within an engaging, beautiful narrative structure that was so evident in Morpho Eugenia, the novella that got turned into the vastly inferior Angels and Insects . . . Paul Auster, take note . . .
3. After Dark, Haruki Murakami. Japanese deliciousness. It goes somewhere inside the reader without going anywhere at all, really. Short, seemingly slight, and yet each secondary character is so well delineated they don't seem like secondary characters . . . each coincidence so well written there doesn't seem to be a coincidence . . . Paul Auster, take more notes. I have to write an extended review of this one to keep getting free books, so I'll give the hollas a rest for now, but it's great.
4. Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky. So fucking good. I'd read David Golder before and not really liked it, besides the great scene at the end, so I was thinking this would be more free-book-getting-duty-reading, but no. No no. Rough draft of two parts of a planned four or five part epic, that reads better than most books that get all the time they need. If someone handed it to me without telling me that, I wouldn't have been able to tell, I don't think. Doesn't feel like it ends up lickety-split. Charlotte Bronte-ish in how the descriptive passages surpass the dialogue, though the dialogue is good, and yet so very Russian in its scope, and so very harsh on the decline of the French.
It sounds trite to say it's a tragedy she wasn't able to finish it, when the death of the dimmest dimbulb in the Holocaust was a greater tragedy than a mere book getting abandoned. But I will say I hate the French a little more than I did before for allowing this woman's death before the epic was finished. She was writing at the height of her powers and it would have been a classic, a staggering classic, and it probably already is.
martedì, giugno 05, 2007
Pop! goes my ears
Two plane rides. Four movies. Hours of pain.
1. Night at the Museum. Masculine fantasy about being a slacker loser and still being a good father because the waxworks come to life at the place where you're a security guard. Especially the cute 'waxworks' of the cute animals who were cutely shot and stuffed. Lousier than it sounds, thanks to efforts at emotional interaction between the horrid Ben Stiller and a bunch of off-set semi-famous types doing cameos as midgets. Whole lines that mean nothing. Rubbish. Pain. Ugh.
2. The Pursuit of Happyness. The story of becoming a stockbroker and rescuing yourself and your son from penury. The premenstrual part of my brain thought it was another masculine fantasy, but the brain brain part enjoyed its message of fortune favouring the brave. It was fine.
3. Wild Hogs. Pain. Pain pain pain. I understand this movie didn't tank and disappear immediately upon release, which is only explicable if the masculine fantasy put forth here - geeky, henpecked half-men can find themselves and earn the world's and their families' respect by driving across the country having unfunny pratfalls - is one that struck some sort of popular chord. Vomit excrement Harley Davidson commercial shit. This movie airs in hell.
4. Music and Lyrics. After all that masculine fantasy I was quite looking forward to some feminine fantasy, figuring a change must be as good as a rest. I was wrong. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore acting in two different movies, spliced together, both of them really shitty and the result more shitty than the sum of its parts. The chemistry between them was so bad I was confused when they started making out. Opening and closing 80's music video sequences featuring Hugh Grant as a A-Ha-type got plugged by my boss, who liked the film, as a 'redeeming' feature. I just saw an insult to A-Ha.
1. Night at the Museum. Masculine fantasy about being a slacker loser and still being a good father because the waxworks come to life at the place where you're a security guard. Especially the cute 'waxworks' of the cute animals who were cutely shot and stuffed. Lousier than it sounds, thanks to efforts at emotional interaction between the horrid Ben Stiller and a bunch of off-set semi-famous types doing cameos as midgets. Whole lines that mean nothing. Rubbish. Pain. Ugh.
2. The Pursuit of Happyness. The story of becoming a stockbroker and rescuing yourself and your son from penury. The premenstrual part of my brain thought it was another masculine fantasy, but the brain brain part enjoyed its message of fortune favouring the brave. It was fine.
3. Wild Hogs. Pain. Pain pain pain. I understand this movie didn't tank and disappear immediately upon release, which is only explicable if the masculine fantasy put forth here - geeky, henpecked half-men can find themselves and earn the world's and their families' respect by driving across the country having unfunny pratfalls - is one that struck some sort of popular chord. Vomit excrement Harley Davidson commercial shit. This movie airs in hell.
4. Music and Lyrics. After all that masculine fantasy I was quite looking forward to some feminine fantasy, figuring a change must be as good as a rest. I was wrong. Hugh Grant and Drew Barrymore acting in two different movies, spliced together, both of them really shitty and the result more shitty than the sum of its parts. The chemistry between them was so bad I was confused when they started making out. Opening and closing 80's music video sequences featuring Hugh Grant as a A-Ha-type got plugged by my boss, who liked the film, as a 'redeeming' feature. I just saw an insult to A-Ha.
lunedì, giugno 04, 2007
Home again, home again
Jiggedy jog. Funny how soon this place got to feel like home. Maybe it was because in Canada I didn't go anywhere that could have been home - Luke Duke's place on the very night he bought another house, a (half) night at Giulietta's, a night at the smashing place Sugar had found for her wedding, and one surreal-y awful sleepless night on the plane that I spent wondering how my cat was doing in the hold. Yes. Lexie is here with us now. We braved the douanes and her too-fresh rabies vaccination and her cuteness won us through.
In fact it was quite striking how people didn't crash into my luggage cart and how they smiled constantly and obligingly in my direction when there was a cat carrier perched on top of my heavy, heavy stuff. I imagine it's something like carrying around a cute baby. Nonetheless I am very, very happy the trip is over, and I'm sure my darling is too. She looks perfectly content but I won't be sure she is until it's evident she's figured out this complicated new European kitty litter.
The wedding was incredible, incidentally, the most emotionally and spiritually honest and true ceremony I'd ever attended, and the most evidently happy bride and groom. They did lots of things outside of the tradition that was established over the last hundred and fifty years or so - you know, in the time where the wedding industry took over so getting married became more than getting a bunch of townsfolk to stand on the church steps while the priest shouted "these people are allowed to fuck now" and everybody got liquored up. Despite this I'm sure it appealed to all the traditionalists in the crowd and it was certainly very touching for me. The events and location of the wedding were also incredible - forest vermin and my five horrid mosquito bites notwithstanding it was a great idea to have the events in a place that was like a playground for grownups, where we could run around barefoot and relax.
So, so good to see everyone too - so good - even better than I'd thought. Their spawn, too. Little Bitch's little baby is stunning, and Spencer Tracy is awesomer every time I see him. How scattered we all are. . . representing all over the world, besides Africa and South America. Something should be done about that. I do think it would be a good idea for semi-annual group vacations. See how we change, see how our attachments change, all over the world. Very pretty idea.
In fact it was quite striking how people didn't crash into my luggage cart and how they smiled constantly and obligingly in my direction when there was a cat carrier perched on top of my heavy, heavy stuff. I imagine it's something like carrying around a cute baby. Nonetheless I am very, very happy the trip is over, and I'm sure my darling is too. She looks perfectly content but I won't be sure she is until it's evident she's figured out this complicated new European kitty litter.
The wedding was incredible, incidentally, the most emotionally and spiritually honest and true ceremony I'd ever attended, and the most evidently happy bride and groom. They did lots of things outside of the tradition that was established over the last hundred and fifty years or so - you know, in the time where the wedding industry took over so getting married became more than getting a bunch of townsfolk to stand on the church steps while the priest shouted "these people are allowed to fuck now" and everybody got liquored up. Despite this I'm sure it appealed to all the traditionalists in the crowd and it was certainly very touching for me. The events and location of the wedding were also incredible - forest vermin and my five horrid mosquito bites notwithstanding it was a great idea to have the events in a place that was like a playground for grownups, where we could run around barefoot and relax.
So, so good to see everyone too - so good - even better than I'd thought. Their spawn, too. Little Bitch's little baby is stunning, and Spencer Tracy is awesomer every time I see him. How scattered we all are. . . representing all over the world, besides Africa and South America. Something should be done about that. I do think it would be a good idea for semi-annual group vacations. See how we change, see how our attachments change, all over the world. Very pretty idea.
giovedì, maggio 31, 2007
I can see every obstacle in my way
My, it was an awful trip getting here; I'm boycotting France for awhile, I think, although Carmen kindly offered the loan of her apartment during her next holiday and we'll probably accept, being fond of lovely, tastefully furnished Parisian lofts and handsome neighborhoods with more patisseries than yoga - erm - what do you call a yoga gym? A depot? I don't know - than yoga depots.
So many things have been so trying that last night, after finally getting to bed in my brother's vermin-infested Donlands basement (which is no reflection on his family's housekeeping as Toronto is full of vermin - I hope Charlie and Minou like eating bugs, Sugarplum), despite my extreme exhaustion I couldn't sleep with frustration and tears of unwarranted self pity until I took fifteen minutes to take stock of each of the problems I was currently facing and think up three or four solutions for each. Then I felt good. I've been under a mischievous star which hasn't interfered with the overall good qualities of my life but has been making almost every small thing that could go wrong go wrong - one of those situations where the temptation is to stamp your feet but the only solution is taking control.
In any case, it's lovely to be with my family now - everybody but Elvis is here - and while I'm not in the thralls of ecstatic return because frankly, Toronto is a lot uglier than Brussels, it was great this morning to speed around on Luke Duke's big manly bike on the wide roads where I wasn't flipping over tram tracks or atmospherically quaint cobblestones, and then getting epilated by those nice Indochinese ladies up the street from my old apartment and buying enough Burt's Bees cosmetics to see me through until an understanding friend or relative visits Brussels.
So many things have been so trying that last night, after finally getting to bed in my brother's vermin-infested Donlands basement (which is no reflection on his family's housekeeping as Toronto is full of vermin - I hope Charlie and Minou like eating bugs, Sugarplum), despite my extreme exhaustion I couldn't sleep with frustration and tears of unwarranted self pity until I took fifteen minutes to take stock of each of the problems I was currently facing and think up three or four solutions for each. Then I felt good. I've been under a mischievous star which hasn't interfered with the overall good qualities of my life but has been making almost every small thing that could go wrong go wrong - one of those situations where the temptation is to stamp your feet but the only solution is taking control.
In any case, it's lovely to be with my family now - everybody but Elvis is here - and while I'm not in the thralls of ecstatic return because frankly, Toronto is a lot uglier than Brussels, it was great this morning to speed around on Luke Duke's big manly bike on the wide roads where I wasn't flipping over tram tracks or atmospherically quaint cobblestones, and then getting epilated by those nice Indochinese ladies up the street from my old apartment and buying enough Burt's Bees cosmetics to see me through until an understanding friend or relative visits Brussels.
martedì, maggio 29, 2007
Every Stygian stench of the rainbow
Just a quick note to say I'm in Paris. Getting off Thalys at that post-apocalyptic stinkhole, the Gare de Nord, made me hate the French for mocking the intelligence of Belgians, who at least have public transportation that doesn't smell like incontinent corpses.
Stormed to the filthy metro station and had an internal debate over which underground line here is sketchiest. I think it's probably the magenta line, though the navy blue line and the provençal orange line are also both unsettling in terms of violence. The forest green line is fine, but there are too many shitty buskers on it due to the Montmartre stops and security being intimidated by the Marx Dormoy crowd. And the space age Tyrian purple line goes through Madeleine, which smells like stewed shit. It ties with the magenta line for nasal offensiveness.
When it comes to the RER, the lapus lazuli line wins the stench, violence and sketch factor hands down. That's magnifique because as it goes to the aeroports and a couple of the train stations, it's how most unsuspecting tourists are introduced to the city. The seemingly inoffensive beige line, however, is the only public tranport line here where I've seen purse snatchers or muggers in action. Besides the magenta line, of course, which only sort of counts as the victim was a bellowing American who was silly enough to keep his cash in his sock, where it made a big cash-shaped lump.
Also, the magenta line has the benefit of being the one that takes me to Carmen's house in the south, where I'm very happy to be, not having seen her for a year, how ridiculous. This is where I realized I was obliged to move back to Europe after I'd finished my thesis. Because of people like her and the human beauty of this continent - even though bits of its public transport smell like a sweaty giant's ass crack - this is where I realize now that that's so fucking awesome I could weep.
Stormed to the filthy metro station and had an internal debate over which underground line here is sketchiest. I think it's probably the magenta line, though the navy blue line and the provençal orange line are also both unsettling in terms of violence. The forest green line is fine, but there are too many shitty buskers on it due to the Montmartre stops and security being intimidated by the Marx Dormoy crowd. And the space age Tyrian purple line goes through Madeleine, which smells like stewed shit. It ties with the magenta line for nasal offensiveness.
When it comes to the RER, the lapus lazuli line wins the stench, violence and sketch factor hands down. That's magnifique because as it goes to the aeroports and a couple of the train stations, it's how most unsuspecting tourists are introduced to the city. The seemingly inoffensive beige line, however, is the only public tranport line here where I've seen purse snatchers or muggers in action. Besides the magenta line, of course, which only sort of counts as the victim was a bellowing American who was silly enough to keep his cash in his sock, where it made a big cash-shaped lump.
Also, the magenta line has the benefit of being the one that takes me to Carmen's house in the south, where I'm very happy to be, not having seen her for a year, how ridiculous. This is where I realized I was obliged to move back to Europe after I'd finished my thesis. Because of people like her and the human beauty of this continent - even though bits of its public transport smell like a sweaty giant's ass crack - this is where I realize now that that's so fucking awesome I could weep.
domenica, maggio 27, 2007
Seems like folks turn into things that they'd never want
Starting to get a really put-upon feeling about the events of the next week or so. I wonder when I started not being able to handle stress all that well. I blame the thesis, or just Paris in general. Just robbed me of my ability to let things slide. Or it could be that things matter more these days. I don't know. Anyways, I'm going to Paris tomorrow night, and Canada the next morning, and then running around like a chicken that's just lost its head. Thank god I love the people involved. As I get older I realize more and more how fucking lazy I am and have less and less of a problem with it.
Old colleagues came to visit from shithole school and brought box of books I'd had shipped to it. Finally get to read City of Glass. Also got the shoes for Sugar's wedding, just in the nick of time. And now to work.
Old colleagues came to visit from shithole school and brought box of books I'd had shipped to it. Finally get to read City of Glass. Also got the shoes for Sugar's wedding, just in the nick of time. And now to work.
giovedì, maggio 24, 2007
There's more than one kind of herb
I haven't had a mouthful of reefer since arriving in Europe, and now we have plants on our back balcony we can't actually smoke. But I'm so proud of them. Aren't they lovely? Just corner grocer's seedlings but they're doing well.
This is a lousy photograph trying to give some idea of what our back view is like; trying to get across how expansive and cosy it is at the same time. There are so many birds here too.
I want a day or two to just hang around my apartment and this weekend is supposed to be three days long, but once more I'm working through the holiday so I can go to Canada on Wednesday without losing too much money. And on Sunday, we're going to Leuven to meet some old colleagues - not that I mind - Leuven is a fun town, though I question how fun it will be without Little Bitch, who, thank goodness, I'll finally see at Sugarplum's wedding.
Spent yesterday's lunchtime looking for bras that would look okay under the bridesmaid dress, which has a low back that doesn't accomodate my need for tit scaffolding well. My chest is honestly not that big compared to what I see on the street every day, but every time I shop for a specialty bra I feel like I'm trying to fit a beanbag chair in a ladle. Oh well. At least they're sexy.
mercoledì, maggio 23, 2007
Watchagonnado
Yesterday was hard - high point was saline gargle and snort to stop myself from getting the F-word's cold, and realizing that now I can drink through my nose. Much stricter editor at the job, and instead of a few green squiggles there were many red crosses across my articles. So I was in a foul mood going home, and as I did I saw a man on the pavement who I think had jumped out of a window.
It's not like in the movies because you think that he looks so normal, except with maybe three things that are really wrong. There were already people screaming into their cellphones at the emergency services, who tore around the corner as I walked past. It was odd to just walk past, but odder to not know what to do, I suppose because there was nothing to be done. No more cries for help that needed answering there.
What a world. I don't even know what's on my mind today.
It's not like in the movies because you think that he looks so normal, except with maybe three things that are really wrong. There were already people screaming into their cellphones at the emergency services, who tore around the corner as I walked past. It was odd to just walk past, but odder to not know what to do, I suppose because there was nothing to be done. No more cries for help that needed answering there.
What a world. I don't even know what's on my mind today.
martedì, maggio 22, 2007
I forgot the storm in music.
I'm reading Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott to calm down a bit in the evenings. I picked it up because it's one of the handsome old books that came to me when my Grandfather died, I didn't feel like reading Jung's lecture notes, and the F-word is monopolizing The Fatal Shore, which we're reading concurrently (not a good idea - note to couples: always buy two copies of Robert Hughes' histories at a time to preserve domestic harmony).
And it's beautiful. Magical even - words like 'snood' make me giggle but whenever I'm distracted away from the poem by something outside it I realize that it's been painting the most incredible pictures in my head, and that all the alterants I've snorted, licked, swallowed, smoked or absorbed through my mucous membranes don't come close - not to the waving banners of beauty or fear all those words can start flapping in my brain.
I haven't read poetry very much since my undergrad, when I went on a fantastic binge in the last year, courtesy of a lovely professor who made the English romantics make sense and who led me on a directed study through Donne, Wyatt and Petrarch to make me use my Italian in a poetic context. We also got to study the Dorothy Sayers translation of the Divine Comedy and I got to do that in Italian too, though I found it about as basculating as reading the Canterbury Tales (that is, quite). We also studied the Canterbury Tales, and lots and lots of classical poetry too, including and especially Homer and Virgil.
So it was lots and lots of poetry, really, and I enjoyed it, and until I went to Italy and found myself under a massive pile of men I was quite sure I'd go back to school to study comparative literature or something of the sort. Now, my point isn't that I couldn't have done something more different from that if I'd tried (honestly - because I'd have flunked out of a math or science course, numbers giving me wrinkles and all). My point, or rather the destinations of my thoughts which are not particularly pointy, is that
1. Now I understand why I hate modern novels with too many adjectives (Zadie Smith, anyone?). For me descriptive language should be beautiful - not just descriptive - or else I might as well just read some fucking poetry, mightn't I?
2. I'm glad I didn't study poetry in a graduate context because my instinct that the institution would rob me of my love for the poems was probably right, as my enjoyment of them is very visual and not particularly analytic, as my enjoyment of almost everything else is.
But. That's only the case if I start reading more poetry than I've been reading over the last seven years.
And it's beautiful. Magical even - words like 'snood' make me giggle but whenever I'm distracted away from the poem by something outside it I realize that it's been painting the most incredible pictures in my head, and that all the alterants I've snorted, licked, swallowed, smoked or absorbed through my mucous membranes don't come close - not to the waving banners of beauty or fear all those words can start flapping in my brain.
I haven't read poetry very much since my undergrad, when I went on a fantastic binge in the last year, courtesy of a lovely professor who made the English romantics make sense and who led me on a directed study through Donne, Wyatt and Petrarch to make me use my Italian in a poetic context. We also got to study the Dorothy Sayers translation of the Divine Comedy and I got to do that in Italian too, though I found it about as basculating as reading the Canterbury Tales (that is, quite). We also studied the Canterbury Tales, and lots and lots of classical poetry too, including and especially Homer and Virgil.
So it was lots and lots of poetry, really, and I enjoyed it, and until I went to Italy and found myself under a massive pile of men I was quite sure I'd go back to school to study comparative literature or something of the sort. Now, my point isn't that I couldn't have done something more different from that if I'd tried (honestly - because I'd have flunked out of a math or science course, numbers giving me wrinkles and all). My point, or rather the destinations of my thoughts which are not particularly pointy, is that
1. Now I understand why I hate modern novels with too many adjectives (Zadie Smith, anyone?). For me descriptive language should be beautiful - not just descriptive - or else I might as well just read some fucking poetry, mightn't I?
2. I'm glad I didn't study poetry in a graduate context because my instinct that the institution would rob me of my love for the poems was probably right, as my enjoyment of them is very visual and not particularly analytic, as my enjoyment of almost everything else is.
But. That's only the case if I start reading more poetry than I've been reading over the last seven years.
lunedì, maggio 21, 2007
Internetworking
I hate networking and I'm trying to work out why . . . maybe it's because human relationships should be built on love, the exchange of ideas and fucking, in that order, and networking would have no place in that if people were more direct animals. Don't get me too wrong - I'm better with conferences, for example, than I used to be and usually end up enjoying them at least a little, because I can often find enough people at them who can start talking to me at an intellectual level above the 'networking' plane once they get going about something they care about.
But I don't like networking, and I think I don't like it because there's the idea that you have to be nice to a person because they're being nice to you when you know they're only being nice to you because they're professionals who want something, and there's no visible way the exchange is going to work out all that well for me since all I want to do with my corporate future is quit and be an analyst or a writer or a muckraking journalist instead.
As if networking is limited to corporate structures though. Sigh. Anyways and especially, it's been on my mind because of Facebook. Some people are more network-y on it than others and it really annoys me - brings networking down to its laziest denominator - you don't even have to pretend to smile at your interlocutor while you're using it. You can just do this :-), or possibly this ;-), even this :-D, and not risk getting extra wrinkles.
In other news, they sell Pocket Coffees here and I think this may be my home city. I've felt that way before though.
But I don't like networking, and I think I don't like it because there's the idea that you have to be nice to a person because they're being nice to you when you know they're only being nice to you because they're professionals who want something, and there's no visible way the exchange is going to work out all that well for me since all I want to do with my corporate future is quit and be an analyst or a writer or a muckraking journalist instead.
As if networking is limited to corporate structures though. Sigh. Anyways and especially, it's been on my mind because of Facebook. Some people are more network-y on it than others and it really annoys me - brings networking down to its laziest denominator - you don't even have to pretend to smile at your interlocutor while you're using it. You can just do this :-), or possibly this ;-), even this :-D, and not risk getting extra wrinkles.
In other news, they sell Pocket Coffees here and I think this may be my home city. I've felt that way before though.
domenica, maggio 20, 2007
So much money, so little truth
So my job is giving me strange ideas about human nature, or just backing up ones I already had - I don't know.
This one story, which obviously I can't tell you much about because people pay kajillions of dollars for the magazine so copyright is what it is, is getting to me a little. A factory is closing down in a district that has had lots of shutdowns recently, and my job was to write an article about why, how much product volume is leaving the sector, how many workers getting shafted, et cetera - you know, a normal trade magazine article.
Investigating it was interesting because, outside of a couple of friendly temp and tech guys, everybody referred me to TWO P.R. agencies or else didn't have a word to say outside of referring me to a very vague press release. Neither did the P.R. agencies, with the bonus that they tried to get psychomological by talking about how the story was already old news . . .
Professionally speaking for me it wasn't a problem, though it will be for the company in question if they care about such things, because the worker's unions were ecstatic to talk to me and tell me whatever they thought I wanted to hear. I got the material I need. But it was interesting in that everybody I spoke to at the company who was too temporary or techy (that is, essential to the physical functioning of the business) to really be a part of the company hierarchy was very friendly and willing to talk. And then, the hierarchy people weren't only unwilling to talk, but were unwilling to talk and then referred me to outsourced labour units (the P.R. companies) whose job was to be unwilling to talk, and who could be expected to have no practical relationship to the sector or practical sympathies with the workers getting shafted.
It was puzzling to me at first - why would so much money be spent on something so seemingly redundant, when you could just insist your workers refer inquiries obliquely to the press release, instead of insisting your workers refer inquiries to the press release AND then to these two outsourced stonewallers who were using psycholomogy a teenager who'd watched Mean Girls without understanding it would be able to see through?
And then as I thought about my job over the past couple of weeks, I came up with three thoughts that feel right:
1. People have an instinct to tell the truth
2. People have an instinct to sympathize with other people
So. Groups of people - companies - have to spend millions of dollars outsourcing third person inquiries to public relations firms, whose employees don't have an emotional attachment to the truths and people concerned. Because if they didn't, eventually people's instinct to tell the truth and to sympathize with other people will overwhelm their instinct to obey a hierarchical instruction.
Maybe this is just common sense but it still shocked me. What strange beasts we are, what a mass of contradictions and social neuroses . . . Anyways, I'm off to work again. If you get bored today and feel like something funny/depressing, look for the animated BBC series Monkey Dust. So much guilty, disgusted laughter.
This one story, which obviously I can't tell you much about because people pay kajillions of dollars for the magazine so copyright is what it is, is getting to me a little. A factory is closing down in a district that has had lots of shutdowns recently, and my job was to write an article about why, how much product volume is leaving the sector, how many workers getting shafted, et cetera - you know, a normal trade magazine article.
Investigating it was interesting because, outside of a couple of friendly temp and tech guys, everybody referred me to TWO P.R. agencies or else didn't have a word to say outside of referring me to a very vague press release. Neither did the P.R. agencies, with the bonus that they tried to get psychomological by talking about how the story was already old news . . .
Professionally speaking for me it wasn't a problem, though it will be for the company in question if they care about such things, because the worker's unions were ecstatic to talk to me and tell me whatever they thought I wanted to hear. I got the material I need. But it was interesting in that everybody I spoke to at the company who was too temporary or techy (that is, essential to the physical functioning of the business) to really be a part of the company hierarchy was very friendly and willing to talk. And then, the hierarchy people weren't only unwilling to talk, but were unwilling to talk and then referred me to outsourced labour units (the P.R. companies) whose job was to be unwilling to talk, and who could be expected to have no practical relationship to the sector or practical sympathies with the workers getting shafted.
It was puzzling to me at first - why would so much money be spent on something so seemingly redundant, when you could just insist your workers refer inquiries obliquely to the press release, instead of insisting your workers refer inquiries to the press release AND then to these two outsourced stonewallers who were using psycholomogy a teenager who'd watched Mean Girls without understanding it would be able to see through?
And then as I thought about my job over the past couple of weeks, I came up with three thoughts that feel right:
1. People have an instinct to tell the truth
2. People have an instinct to sympathize with other people
So. Groups of people - companies - have to spend millions of dollars outsourcing third person inquiries to public relations firms, whose employees don't have an emotional attachment to the truths and people concerned. Because if they didn't, eventually people's instinct to tell the truth and to sympathize with other people will overwhelm their instinct to obey a hierarchical instruction.
Maybe this is just common sense but it still shocked me. What strange beasts we are, what a mass of contradictions and social neuroses . . . Anyways, I'm off to work again. If you get bored today and feel like something funny/depressing, look for the animated BBC series Monkey Dust. So much guilty, disgusted laughter.
giovedì, maggio 17, 2007
Oddities
Yesterday was odd. Odd enough that I won't resist the urge to gradually make this blog more and more like a journal - I left work totally unsettled because of it all.
The day started with walking to work through the absolutely silent streets of Ascension Day, a public holiday here. That was odd enough because the streets are generally jam packed to a stupid degree with back-ups from fender benders or from some twat trying to parallel park on a badly placed dime. Too much money, too many big cars. I could hear the birds all the way to the office and seemed to see a lot of things I'm too busy avoiding being hit by a car to see generally.
When I was walking down my erstwhile business class but presently abandoned avenue, I was accosted by a man who looked to be tidy but fairly fresh off a Congolese boat, the Congo being landlocked I know, but there you are. I saw him smiling ingratiatingly as he approached me, and in those few seconds I decided I knew the neighborhood well enough to give directions, that I had enough change to be panhandled, that I had a repertoire of ripostes to invitations to join religions and sexual situations, and that I remembered the lower-body skeletal manipulation movements that would let me fight off anything aggressive.
But then he said, in a childish voice and using a familiar address but with perfectly correct French, "I'd like to say that it would be nice to be friends, if you want."
I was shocked and quickly went on a cold autopilot, assuming there was a sexual aspect to all of it; made a dismissive sound and went to my office. Then I proceeded to feel awful about it the rest of the day.
It's statistically probable I was right to assume it was the beginning of a pass, but the least I could have done was ask him how I could have been his friend. F-word pointed out there was a fair chance the answer would have been disgusting. But I was ready to be disgusted - I assumed I'd be disgusted - and maybe I wouldn't have been disgusted, so it couldn't have hurt to ask. Maybe he was too embarrassed to just ask for the euro or two I would have given him if he'd asked flat out.
Or worse: maybe he really did need some sort of help that I could possibly have given and I've got to a point where I just don't give strangers that kind of help anymore because my perception of the human race is so low, which sucks for him, and sucks for me, because it means I'm at least a little bit disgusted all the time now. I don't know what to do about that, but I think it means I should volunteer within a structure with people who need help, since the rest of the world shouldn't have to pay for me being disgusted with it.
Anyways, once I got to the office the day kept getting stranger, but I'll have to write about that tomorrow because now it's time to go to the office again.
The day started with walking to work through the absolutely silent streets of Ascension Day, a public holiday here. That was odd enough because the streets are generally jam packed to a stupid degree with back-ups from fender benders or from some twat trying to parallel park on a badly placed dime. Too much money, too many big cars. I could hear the birds all the way to the office and seemed to see a lot of things I'm too busy avoiding being hit by a car to see generally.
When I was walking down my erstwhile business class but presently abandoned avenue, I was accosted by a man who looked to be tidy but fairly fresh off a Congolese boat, the Congo being landlocked I know, but there you are. I saw him smiling ingratiatingly as he approached me, and in those few seconds I decided I knew the neighborhood well enough to give directions, that I had enough change to be panhandled, that I had a repertoire of ripostes to invitations to join religions and sexual situations, and that I remembered the lower-body skeletal manipulation movements that would let me fight off anything aggressive.
But then he said, in a childish voice and using a familiar address but with perfectly correct French, "I'd like to say that it would be nice to be friends, if you want."
I was shocked and quickly went on a cold autopilot, assuming there was a sexual aspect to all of it; made a dismissive sound and went to my office. Then I proceeded to feel awful about it the rest of the day.
It's statistically probable I was right to assume it was the beginning of a pass, but the least I could have done was ask him how I could have been his friend. F-word pointed out there was a fair chance the answer would have been disgusting. But I was ready to be disgusted - I assumed I'd be disgusted - and maybe I wouldn't have been disgusted, so it couldn't have hurt to ask. Maybe he was too embarrassed to just ask for the euro or two I would have given him if he'd asked flat out.
Or worse: maybe he really did need some sort of help that I could possibly have given and I've got to a point where I just don't give strangers that kind of help anymore because my perception of the human race is so low, which sucks for him, and sucks for me, because it means I'm at least a little bit disgusted all the time now. I don't know what to do about that, but I think it means I should volunteer within a structure with people who need help, since the rest of the world shouldn't have to pay for me being disgusted with it.
Anyways, once I got to the office the day kept getting stranger, but I'll have to write about that tomorrow because now it's time to go to the office again.
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